


pulse out echoes of darkness

by meritmut



Category: Doctor Who, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Halloween, Post-Thor, crackship, house wights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-02
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-17 13:53:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Loki finds a distraction, after his fall from grace, by causing havoc for a young woman recently trapped in a parallel universe...</p><p>(written after a conversation on tumblr about Loki being a house wight in Rose's flat, because we needed something light-hearted)</p>
            </blockquote>





	pulse out echoes of darkness

Someone had once told Loki, back when he and his brothers would happily sit together with their tutor and never wonder if there was more to the universe than the tales he had to share with them, that if the cyclical year resembled a great tapestry - interlinked and woven with a variegated spectrum of innumerable colours and textures - then if you closed your eyes and ran your fingers across the weft you could find Winternights by touch alone.

_The weave is thinner, see; the shimmering veil between one world and another fraying as the souls interred beyond the light find purchase in the gaps and claw their way through, slipping into the world we know to make amends or mischief as they see fit. Wights, some call them. Poltergeists. We know better._

And so, knowing better and carrying his knowledge with him like a talisman against despair, when Loki falls from Asgard’s great height and finds himself lost in the roiling darkness of the deepest cosmos, it’s with a keen sense of anticipation that he awaits the turning of the year. He maps it out as he was taught, stretching his fingers across the temporal weave and waiting, waiting for his chance. 

He won’t go home. Not to Asgard, he’s too weak and there’s nothing there for him anymore. Not yet, anyway. But to Midgard…yes, to the little realm his gaze turns. Midgard has potential, and he has nowhere else to go.

* * *

For the first week or so after she’d moved in, dragging up and unpacking more boxes than, it seemed, she’d even packed in the first place, the tiny flat had seemed cold and empty and almost hostile - and Rose had been perfectly fine with it. She’d been the same; ignoring her mother’s calls, not even bothering to glance at the texts she’d received and generally going about her life as if the world outside had simply ceased to exist. 

It’s not her world, after all, only an imitation. An unworld, a world-without or a world-beyond. Her own home, her entire universe, is sealed away behind the leaden veil of the Void and forever barred to her.

One day soon she needs to start researching a way to get back, and after that (however long it takes) put her theoretical findings into practice. She’ll need Torchwood’s assistance for that, though: the field of transdimensional teleportation isn’t exactly her strong suit. She’s not even sure that that’s what it’s called - she never did pay much attention in GCSE physics. She’d loved it, thought it was fascinating and even understood some of it, but her teachers had been dull and disengaged enough to drive even Rose into a near catatonic-state. It had been from him that she’d learned the most…from him, she had learned everything.

She doesn’t dream of him - of her Doctor - as often as she thought she might (or even as often as she might want). There’s Norway, there’s a feeble excuse for a last goodbye, and then nothing. No warm memory to fill her dreams and lessen the ache in her chest when she wakes, no familiar voice to drip through her ribs and cushion the blows his absence deals her. The absence is in itself a kind of shadow to her now, an effortless ghost. If she could only dream of him again, she thinks she might be able to exorcise it.

But then, that was the point of the new flat, to begin again. To go on with her life instead of thinking of him and clamping her eyes so tightly shut that stars burst into life behind her vision and she grits her teeth for missing him.

It’s not all pain, not as the autumn draws on and she starts to leave the flat more. The drizzle that paints the windows silver-grey and leeches into flesh and bone alike when she ventures into town…it’s the same drizzle that might’ve fallen in her London. The clouds that coat the sky might be the same clouds that weigh upon the rooftops in her home city. It’s that thought that has her smiling again, for the first time since she lost him: the year is on its way out, a new one on the way. Time for change, to at least _try_ to move on with this life that has been handed to her.

It could’ve been a lot worse: she tells herself this anytime the gaping loss threatens to overwhelm her. The Void might’ve taken her - _would’ve_ taken her, were it not for the father that the universe returned to her when it robbed Rose of her Doctor. Give and take, the balance of all things. What it took from her, it at least endeavoured to replace.

(The failure of the endeavour can’t be blamed upon it, she supposes.)

It’s after eight on the last day of October (and how could she have been so daft as to go for a walk on Hallowe’en when the streets are crawling with kids in costume? She hurries home after less than half an hour out) when she unlocks her door and flicks on the light to find the kitchen stool on its side and the radio crackling absently away.

* * *

Her reactions are interesting to watch, Loki muses, as the girl in the blue jacket kicks off her shoes and runs a hand through her fair hair. She seems puzzled, but not afraid - stressed, but not anxious.

She lets out a heavy sigh and sets the stool to rights, looking about her curiously before crossing to the kitchen window and tugging at the handle. Locked. Of course it’s locked. She left it locked, didn’t she? He watches while she checks every window in her tiny home, frowns to herself for a moment and eventually shrugs as if giving up on trying to explain it. He smirks, feeling the veil thinning further. It was pure chance he had come across this place as he peeled away the walls of the universe and found himself on Midgard - chance, and yet for the first time since the fall, he finds himself lightening a little.

It brings a nostalgic kind of amusement to play games with a hapless victim. No harm done, just ruffling the hairs of a mortal while he can because what else is there to do? He’s lost, and all the harmless recreation in the cosmos won’t change that. The gates of Asgard have closed against him, the branches of the world tree may never lead him home again, but this Midgard…well, there is potential here for more than mere games.


End file.
